June 4, 2016

“My mother planted the lavender bushes by the gazebo. They attracted bees in the summer and the buzzing of the bees and the soft scent of lavender filled my head with dreams.”

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“It began to snow lightly as I walked to the bridge. The city was grey stone. Follow the pigeons, Alice had said, and I crossed empty plazas and entered dark tunnels and emerged into the light and no pigeon or angel flew up in my path.”

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“Manuel didn’t go by Manuel anymore by the time I met him. That is how I should have known he would disappear.”

June 1, 2016

“The railroad boys are ghosts. They sit cross-legged on the tracks and stare into the sun, like they’re waiting for some meaning to fall from the sky and tug their eyes open. Or closed, maybe. I don’t know the faces of most of the boys, not anymore. The older ones go missing.”

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I wrote this story when I was 19. The writer Ma Thida once called it “very emotional.”